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Social Organization at the District Courts

Colleague Relationships Among Indian Lawyers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Charles Morrison
Charles Morrison*
Affiliation:
University of Rochester
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In addition to containing religious centers of pilgrimage, regional and local markets, and educational establishments, a district headquarters town in India is, virtually by definition, the seat of a whole complex of law courts. The personnel whose activities contribute to the patterning of social life in such towns includes as an essential feature a small brotherhood of local legal practitioners. The present paper describes one such brotherhood: the advocates who practice in a district headquarters town in Haryana. The main problem with which I shall be concerned is that of isolating and describing the system of social relations, the interconnected set of behavioral patterns, that occurs in the daily interactions among a hundred or more professionals in the district courts. It follows that the paper looks to lawyers rather than law.

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 3 , Issue 2-3: Special Issue Devoted to Lawyers in Developing Societies, with Particular Reference to India , February 1969 , pp. 251 - 267
Copyright
Copyright © 1969 by the Law and Society Association.

Footnotes

Author's Note: This paper was prepared during my tenure of an American Institute of Indian Studies Faculty Research Fellowship in 1967-1968. The research was also supported by a National Science Foundation Grant. A version of the present paper was read at a seminar organized by Prof. Burton Stein in Madras in June 1968.

References

1. I prefer not to identify the location more specifically. Practitioners there are of an opinion, however, that their bar is fairly typical and representative of others in this region.

2. J. E. Carlin, Lawyers' Ethics 171 (1966).

3. R. D. Schwartz, Reflections on the Role of the Indian Lawyer, in Impact of Land Legislation in Mysore (C. K. Jaimsimha Rao, 1965).

4. Given the focus set out above, this paper ignores professional relations linking district lawyers with practitioners at the subdistrict (tahsil) and High Court levels.

Between district and subdistrict there is much professional mobility but little referral of work. District headquarters lawyers often appear for their clients at the tahsil and vice versa. There is virtually no status differentiation between tahsil lawyers and the majority of district headquarters lawyers.

When a case goes on appeal to the High Court from the district level, the litigants usually take the files themselves and seek High Court advocates through their own networks of contacts or become prey to touts. Sometimes a district lawyer recommends a high court advocate whom he knows personally—usually either a lawyer who has migrated from that particular district headquarters to the High Court or one who was a school or college acquaintance of the referring lawyer. More frequently district lawyers say they give their clients the names of a few leading High Court lawyers.

Very few district court lawyers take their clients' cases to the High Court. Most district lawyers say that they cannot afford the time away from their headquarters or that the system of fixing dates for hearings at the High Court works against them. Some district lawyers say they would be out of their depths professionally or are not sufficiently familiar with High Court procedure.

5. A. Beteille, Elites, Status Groups, and Caste in Modern India, in India and Ceylon: Unity and Diversity 223-43 (P. Mason ed. 1967).

6. A. L. Epstein, The Case Method in the Field of Law, in The Craft of Social Anthropology 229 (A. L. Epstein ed. 1967).

7. E. Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959).

8. L. W. Hazlehurst, Entrepreneurship and the Merchant Castes of a Punjabi City (1966).

9. In a survey of law students that I conducted at law colleges in Chandigarh and Lucknow in 1968, respondents were asked whether they felt a partnership was likely to be beneficial or harmful in a lawyer's career. Of the 274 who replied to this question, 162 felt partnerships were not likely to be beneficial. Mistrust among partners was a frequently cited explanation. Among practicing lawyers, the percentage who feel partnerships are unbeneficial is undoubtedly far higher than among students.

10. A. C. Mayer, The Significance of Quasi-Groups in the Study of Complex Societies, in The Anthropology of Complex Societies (M. Banton ed. 1966) and A. C. Mayer, Caste and Local Politics in India, in India and Ceylon: Unity and Diversity (P. Mason ed. 1967).